Weapons scientists, like the ones at Los Alamos, continued to develop new methods of destruction, opening new Pandora’s boxes so that all generations to follow would have more and more to fear. The designers kept at their work, even after disasters like the recent capacitor accident, even if it required them to ignore the threat to human lives.
The official Los Alamos press release implied that nothing serious had happened. When the Challenger had exploded, NASA shut down for over a year—but when a major weapons program went wrong, the work barely paused. According to the news, a safety inspection and official inquiry would be scheduled “in the near future.”
It was just like the cover-up in Los Angeles. Ted Walblaken had been an old friend when Elizabeth had worked the books for United Atomics. But she had left the giant defense contractor right after Ted’s death, after United Atomics tried to assure the press, and Ted’s fellow employees, that it could not be proved a work-related radiation exposure had caused his cancer.
That had been a turning point for her. She felt as if someone had shaken her awake from a nightmare she hadn’t even known she was having.
And now this Los Alamos test was scheduled, hardly a week after five people had died in a lab accident. Shouldn’t all research have been shut down and reassessed? Nobody seemed to care.
Elizabeth had stood in the Santa Fe office of the United Conscience Group, her fingers clenched around the newspaper clipping. The office had little furniture, a phone and a few desks, a poster on the wall showing the burned corpse of a Nagasaki victim sprawled above the slogan, “Technical Excellence Brought to You by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.” The United Conscience Group looked like a fly-by-night company in a low-rent office, but they had been active since the Gulf War.
Elizabeth scowled. If you could call this “active.”
Dave, Tim, and Marcia all reacted with suitable outrage at the news of the lab accident, then they made the appropriate “You’re not serious!” response when Elizabeth told them that the other weapons tests were going to continue on schedule at Los Alamos. She knew what would happen next.
Dave rubbed his hands together. “All right, people, we’ve got to get moving on this! Let’s contact the local radio stations, Albuquerque too, to see if we can get on the air. Tim, why don’t you draft a few letters to the editor? Marcia, you want to draw up some flyers and get them printed? We’ll have to go out and hit the street corners. I’ll get on the phone and round up all the help we can get. Let’s nip this in the bud—time to make ourselves felt!”
Rah, rah, Elizabeth thought, then left the office before Dave could assign her some insipid duties. Letters to the editor? Flyers? Yeah, that would sure make people tremble in their seats and change the world; these guys must have thought they were back in the sixties. The United Conscience Group had never done anything but talk, and as the cliché said so appropriately, actions speak louder than words.
That afternoon, she and Jeff had scaled the ten-foot-high fence that encircled the remote testing site. The canyon terrain was too rugged for most people even to attempt to hike, though the restricted area lay only a few miles from the wilderness of Bandelier National Monument. No one had questioned Elizabeth and her companion as they left the old visitor’s center building, setting off for the backcountry.’
From their resting spot partway down the canyon wall, Elizabeth surveyed the surrounding terrain. In the coming darkness, it was impossible to see into the depths of the canyon. “Keep a watch for headlights coming up the road. Patrols are the only surveillance they’ll use.”
“Yeah.”
Elizabeth pulled her backpack over her shoulders. The equipment inside clanked together. Jeff turned her around and fumbled with rearranging the chisels, hammer, and several sharp spikes so they would make no more noise. They each ate a trail bar in silence, then Jeff led the way down the tortuous route he had spotted.
She heard only his breathing as the two of them moved into the falling darkness. The shadows stretched longer, making it more difficult to find the appropriate handholds and footholds. The rocks felt warm against her skin, but they would cool rapidly at night. In little hollows along the cliffs, evening birds began to chatter with the sunset.
Time contracted for her. She followed Jeff, made sure she did nothing clumsy or stupid focused her concentration on the ominous MCG equipment sitting under the tarp. She thought of it as a dragon waiting to be slain.
They finished their descent without incident. She shot a quick glance up to the top of the cliffs—she couldn’t see the craggy steepness they had just negotiated.
Rumbles from the approaching storm rolled down the canyon. Light from the full moon peering over the canyon rim splashed over the ground, lighting the rocks with an eerie glow. As the moon slipped behind the clouds they had to make their way by touch the last few hundred feet.
Jeff stood beside her on the cement pad, catching his breath. The tarp stood high enough on its metal support poles that they could easily stand under the rippling cloth. He flicked his glance from side to side. “Feels like we’re on stage. Let’s hurry up.”
Elizabeth shrugged the pack from her shoulders. She flicked on a flashlight and unzipped the back pocket, pulling out a pair of cotton gloves.
“What are those for?” Jeff whispered. She didn’t know why he kept so quiet—they would be making enough noise in a few minutes.
“They’ve got my fingerprints on file, when I was arrested at Livermore, remember?” She felt a flash of annoyance. The arrest had been a source of friction between them, over who was willing to go furthest for their beliefs.
Jeff didn’t reply, but stepped to the MCG. He put his hands on his hips; from the taut muscles on his back, Elizabeth could see he was angry. The tarp flapped in a breeze, making the support ropes creak.
The explosive device looked like a torpedo lying on the pad. Elizabeth walked around it, stepping over the thick cables that ran up from a manhole to the device. Jeff squatted by the opening and directed his light down inside.
“The wires run underneath the pad. Probably to the bunker.” One of the thick hoses leaked white vapor. He ran a hand along the hose, then jerked it away. “It’s cold as an iceberg!”
“Probably liquid nitrogen.”
“Is it dangerous?”
She made a deprecating comment about Humanities majors, but Jeff didn’t hear her.
Elizabeth touched the MCG itself, half expecting the cylinder to rear up, expose teeth and devour her. Nothing happened. She glanced back at Jeff. “Come on. Looks like this is all set up. Keep away from the wires and just smash as much as you can.”
“We should have brought those explosives.” He looked at the large machine. “Would have made this a lot easier.”
“This will be more… personal. Think of it as smashing an abandoned car.”
Elizabeth took the hammer and chisel and a handful of spikes from her pack. Jeff had a hand sledge and a rubber-handled hatchet. She followed the vapor-emitting hose to where a series of wires ran around the MCG’s circumference. She wanted to destroy the thing, but her own curiosity made her try to figure everything out. She had enough of a physics and engineering background that she should be able to identify the pieces of equipment at least.
Though her MBA had come after she left United Atomics, after Ted Walblaken had died of his cancer, Elizabeth had taken an undergraduate degree in physics from Berkeley. She knew the basics behind the MCG. Explosives compressing magnetic fields could be used to power exotic strategic weapons. This device here would be only a simple test run before the big scale-ups to be conducted at the Nevada Test Site. But she and Jeff could never have broken into the giant Nevada complex. Here the security seemed ridiculously lax.